TOPIC: My Beekeeping Adventure!

Guys,
I'm sorry to hear about your losses. Maya is giving a good technical description of what takes places in a freeze. I've been there and done that on a commercial level and it is not a good feeling. Watching $60,000 disappear overnight is never a good feeling. I had a similar loss this year myself with the peaches. My sprayer broke down more than once and since I could not get a part fast enough the crop is lost. Good luck next season fellows.
Hugh

classicfur wrote:

Maya

I checked all my apple trees for apples. What I found was mostly dried up brown blossoms with most not having any apples. Like you said, most of the blooms that did'nt freeze were at the top of the trees. I expect less than 10% survived.

I guess I thought that when you see blossoms, then there will be fruit. But thats not always the case.

All the pear trees seem fine.

Thanks for teaching something about apple trees and their blossoms.

Thanks,

classicfur

Crazy spring! My wife and I toured a few big orchards in Western Vt Sunday. Most had severe losses. One had a very good ammount of apples as we drove down this road, then we turned and headed downhill....virtually nothing at the bottom of the hill. Cold air settles in the low spots. One of Vt's biggest orchards looked as though they had huge losses. Oh well I'm sure they all had crop insurance.

Luckily the bulk of my commercial orchard is only on it's second year so I only lost a few thousand $ this year Hugh. Looking on the bright side, those young trees will get some good growth this year! Here's a pic of my new high density orchard.Last years planting on the right, and some new ones planted this year on the left. 1007 trees in all right now, soon to be 1500.

Update on my bees.

They have been doing pretty well. we've had alot of rain lately, but the bees are collecting alot of nectar between rains.

I have about a 1/4 acre of black berries spread out over my property and the bees have been hitting the blooms on them for about 10 days now. There's still alot of blooms left to open. There are thousands of bees collecting the harvest from these berries. Also a few bumble bees collecting nectar.

Here's a few pics.

close up berry bush.

Bees

bees

Fat Bumble Bee

close up

Nice pics Classic! I've noticed I saw no Honey bees while my trees were in bloom, not even in my wifes gardens. Now I've been seeing some on clover and berries. Any ideas why?

It's hard to get good close up pics of the bees. They only spend a few seconds at each blossom. I get the camera about 3\" from the bees and they are so busy collecting nectar that they never notice that I'm standing right next to them. It's quite thrilling to watch them.